"An answer to those questions just now is scarcely possible," he replied. "We will call them, if you please, Conundrum Number Three."
CONUNDRUM NUMBER FOUR
THE COURTSHIP OF NAIDA
Rose, Leonard and I first saw Naida Modeschka dance from the wings of the great London music hall where she was the star performer, and where we, very much to our surprise, had been offered a brief engagement. I think that from our point of vantage she was even more wonderful than from the vast and densely packed auditorium. None of us had ever before seen movement like it. The wooden boards her feet touched seemed at the moment of contact to become a sea of quicksilver. She had her own arrangement of lights, and she floated in and out of them, her pale face and limbs glittering at one moment like polished marble, the next only a shadow, a skulking, floating shadow, with a pair of great black eyes shining from a terrified face. She never told us or any one else whence came the music to which she danced, notes as full of Arcadian and mysterious poetry as Grieg, and sometimes breathing the riotous passion of Dvorák. She seemed to delight in unexpected interludes, in sudden changes, and there was something even a little cynical in the outburst of savage passion with which her dance concluded. There was not the slightest doubt, however, as to her complete success. The audience at this particular music hall, the Parthenon, is seldom jaded—they are drawn from too wholesome a class of people—but they are as quick to appreciate a new thing as any audience in the world. There were qualities in Naida's dancing which even the Russian Ballet had failed to disclose—pride of the body, cynical contempt of passion for its own sake, and underneath, the soft, alluring call to Love. She stood by us, panting, after her fifth recall. The faintest of perfumes, something between green tea and Russian violets, seemed to be exuded of her breathlessness from the trembling, exquisitely shaped body, concealed, for the sake of ancient prejudices, under a flowing veil of black net, more subtly appealing to modern perceptions than even the naked Eve reaching up to the branches of the apple tree. We were a little spellbound, but her eyes caught mine and I spoke.
"Mademoiselle," I said, "you dance as no other on earth."
"Why not include heaven, monsieur," she answered quickly, "for I fear there will be no dancing like mine there."
She made her final bow and came back to where a gaunt and stolid maid pushed past us and wrapped her in a long black satin coat, trimmed and lined with black sable fur. The maid would have hurried her off but she lingered.
"It is your turn, Monsieur?" she asked me. "You three who appear now?"